A festival that celebrates forgotten folklore and oral story-telling

Shaguna Gahilote, a master storyteller who has been weaving stories for 15 years, believes that folk tales cannot be narrated indoors. “The atmosphere is what brings the story to life,” she says. It’s fitting then that a performance meant to take one back in time is being staged at Delhi’s Sunder Nursery. The 16th-century park, spread over 90 acres, has a rich history and Mughal monuments, both big and small, to show for it.

Kathakar, a three-day storytelling festival dedicated to the narration of forgotten folklore and featuring artistes from around the globe, began yesterday. Started by Gahilote and her sisters Prarthana and Rachna, the trio from Dehradun organised the first edition of Kathakar in 2010 at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre as a part of Ghummakad Narain, a literature festival in Dehradun that honours India’s first Braille editor Thakur Vishva Narain Singh. Since then, the festival has managed to attract a small but dedicated audience in Delhi every year. 

Storyteller Shaguna Gahilote; actor Manoj Bajpayee; filmmaker Imtiaz Ali; aboriginal leader and storyteller Uncle Larry Walsh; singer Mohit Chauhan; performer and storyteller Danish Husain

This year’s audiences should be bigger, given that many big-name performers have been lined up. With the aim of reviving the lost tradition of reciting and listening to stories and tales, the ninth edition of the festival also features artistes from Poland, Lithuania, Romania and the United Kingdom, along with prominent storytellers from India. While this isn't the first time global artistes will make their presence felt at Kathakar, big-ticket actors like Manoj Bajpayee was on the opening day’s lineup with his segment, “Kisse Kahani Aur Adaakari”. Director and producer Imtiaz Ali will be present on Sunday to recount his film-making experiences in a segment titled "Kissey Kahani aur Cinema".

According to Gahilote, this international festival aims to make folklore accessible and enjoyable. Instead of sticking to traditional forms of storytelling, which are often inaccessible for people who are not proficient in a given language, the performers will narrate old stories in innovative ways. For instance, Emilia Raiter, a Polish harpist and storyteller will perform one of her theatrical concerts by weaving Slavic myths with music. Also, as most of these artistes are travelling storytellers who are not confined to telling stories from a specific region or country, expect to listen to tales of the goddess Kali and stories from the Mahabharata from the perspective of UK-based storyteller Emily Hennessey.

Storyteller Shaguna Gahilote

Likewise, Danish Husain, an actor and storyteller who dabbles in multiple art forms, will lead “Qissebazi: A Multilingual Storytelling Orbit”. This storytelling project has been travelling to different cities and countries since 2016, with performances at institutions such as Harvard University and Columbia University. Husain possesses a kitty of stories in a fascinatingly diverse set of languages, including Sanskrit, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu. While storytellers Rashmi Mann and Ruchita Tahiliani will initiate "Qissebaazi" through a Haryanvi rendition of the Arabian Nights with stories of Shaddo (Scheherazade), a Jat woman who recites stories every night to help her husband fall asleep, Husain will perform an episode from the Tilism-e-Hoshruba, a fantasy epic over 8,000 pages long that was reportedly printed in 1800s Lucknow. Tushar Kadam, a student of Indian classical musician and percussionist Ustad Taufeeq Qureshi, will accompany the storytellers with beats from his djembe. 

  

Aboriginal cultural leader Uncle Larry Walsh, one of the few Elders in Melbourne who focuses on storytelling, honoured one of the world’s oldest traditions of oral folklore. In his maiden performance at the festival, he presented these ancient stories with a contemporary outlook.

The three-day event is designed to appeal to both children and adults (singer Mohit Chauhan was part of the opening act). There are two separate schedules for each day, with the morning reserved for school children and the evening for adults. On the last day of the festival Gahilote will narrate folk tales from her book Curious Tales from the Himalayas (2017), a collection of folk tales from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, for school children.

Tickets cost Rs 100 and are available on www.bookmyshow.com